As ecommerce sales increase, the market is more comprehensive, with many segments and varied preferences, which means that strategies created for a certain platform and audience don’t work for all.
Traditionally, ecommerce platforms are built with an integrated front-end and back-end, therefore, customer-facing features and tools are strongly connected (website architecture called “Monolithic Websites“). While this approach has worked well in terms of site performance and maintenance, it currently has some limitations if you want to keep up with ecommerce trends and consumer needs.
For this reason, merchants began to look for alternatives to separate the back-end services from the front-end experiences, thus achieving more flexibility. And with this change, in the architecture, brands can create more memorable customer experiences and meet changing market realities.
Fortunately, today, there are already other approaches, with an independent ecommerce architecture that brings together the construction of the front end, using microservices to create a larger App and the name of this architecture is Composable Commerce.
Composable Commerce involves three principles:
- Modular Architecture: allows each component to function independently, but communicate and share data through APIs;
- Open ecosystem: enables brands to create multiple apps, composable solutions and best practices;
- Flexible: allows you to create and develop any solution or customization, adapted to your business, there are no limitations;
- Business Centralization: allows brands to invest in software and Apps that understand their unique needs.
Composable commerce is very useful for providing a highly flexible service, as well as allowing different parts of the site to remain independent of each other, this facilitates changes that need to be made over time.
With this architecture, the ecommerce interface is dissociated from the technical part (the server):
These are some other benefits of Composable Commerce:
- No vendor lock-in – brands don’t have to be dependent on long-term vendor contracts;
- Roadmap development approach – allows you to put goals, timelines, and analytics in order of priority so that a realistic cost estimate and strategy can be made;
- Increased employee satisfaction and engagement – composable commerce is developed with little code, plus specialized IT skills;
- Advanced technology – composable commerce is designed to evolve along with changes in technology and the marketplace without requiring an upgrade.
How Composable Commerce works:
In this scenario, you may have already seen something about MACH Architecture, from MACH Alliance.
But do you know what MACH Architecture is?
MACH is a technology standard that describes the modern architecture, through some prerequisites. Namely, Microservices, API-first, Cloud Native, and Headless. It is a business enabler, which enables ecommerce with a high level of flexibility and scalability.
“Future proof enterprise technology and propel current and future digital experiences” (…) “We aim to free up technology.”
MACH Alliance
These are some benefits of MACH architecture:
- Agility and Speed: MACH solutions allow new ideas to be realized quickly and easily, and decrease time to market;
- Efficiency: with APIs, it is possible to integrate systems and create efficient processes;
- Automatic updates: with this technology, launches are automatic and do not harm the existing system
Knowing this background, we have seen that Headless is one of the solutions present in MACH, which is the tool that companies use to take advantage of Composable commerce.
So how can we differentiate Headless Commerce and Composable Commerce? Here are some points:
- Headless Commerce – It is a system where the front-end and back-end are decoupled and operate independently. Allows merchants to constantly improve the shopping experience, and remains dependent on the underlying back-end system;
- Composable Commerce – It is a system where, with independent front-end and back-end, it communicates via API and specific solutions can be replaced without affecting other parts of the system. We could even say that every component (not only the front end), is independent of others, but also, independent of the platform suppliers. Allows merchants to adapt and choose best-of-breed components.
As you could read earlier, Composable Commerce and Headless commerce are not the same things, but they are closely related, although composable commerce takes you even further.
After understanding each solution a bit, it is always important to prioritize the best option for your customers and for everything to work in the best way on your Ecommerce platform.
The Headless strategy allows brands to enhance the user experience and reduce the time it takes to exchange information on the site.
The Composable Commerce solution, on the other hand, is a good choice for companies to adapt more quickly to market trends.
Would you like to know more about Ecommerce and its various solutions and technologies?
PIPECODES is very happy to assist you in your project!
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